Congrats on the WorkEx launch, Laura! I've alerted my friends in the three AA cohousing neighborhoods, who may include some good prospects. I know that the town has its own independent economy, but I'm curious if you're seeing regional fallout from the Detroit collapse, in people's perception of business opportunity... and whether this is driving folks to your cooperative community space as an alternative to spending/investing more to do things on their own.
You wrote: > WorkEx is a little different from some of the other coworking spaces > we've looked at, in that we don't rent desks. It's a general > membership structure and is focused on building a community of > independent workers of all flavors, not just techies. We have writers > and artists and filmmakers, as well as the requisite smattering of web > workers, and hope to keep diversity of fields in the general > membership. See http://workantileexchange.com/about.html for a more > polished explanation. > That model is not actually that unusual anymore... I've seen a number of incubators/hacker spaces/writers' collectives using variations on that; coworking is a "big tent" and the pioneering tech-driven rent-a-desk-by-the-month spaces are no longer the only game in town. A cautionary note, from one college town to another: One local space, Derby Creek Coworking, did not last more than a few months, because it was so cooperative in style (bylaws borrowed from a student living co-op) that prospective members were deterred by the perceived time commitment involved in group work, decision-making, and meetings. It doesn't sound like that's going to be a challenge for you, but do make sure that members have a voice without having to spend lots of time shouting to feel heard. WorkEx also has rentable training space; there's a large room upstairs > and several smaller conference rooms. A pair of local coders have been > running a Ruby on Rails class in the large space and it's going very > well. > We're getting a lot of walk-ins wanting to rent the conference room. > Do any of you find that to be a dominant request in your areas? As to the space rental Q: we're finding lots of interest in our downtown Berkeley spot, especially for evening and weekend classes and MeetUps. I recommend setting a significant price differential to incentivize people/groups to become members, working out partnerships so they come for the meeting space but stay for the community. Just one final Q, given your location: will events be catered by Zingerman's? ;-) Raines Cohen, Coworking Coach <http://www.CoworkingCoach.com/> recovering from a fun but exhausting weekend doing Coworking & Hacker Spaces outreach at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA, and figuring out how best to support the Whuffaoke <http://www.whuffaoke.com/> tour. > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
